| I think the older you get, especially as an artist, you recognize the opportunity and the privilege you have to say something becomes more sacred... Your inner editor becomes harsher, a little more inclined to say: Are you sure you’re going to waste everyone’s time with these heady words? Or are you going to clear the way for something that means something? Because this might be the last chance to do anything with the tools you’ve been given. |
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Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk of Low.
(Nathan Keay/Sub Pop Records)
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“I think the older you get, especially as an artist, you recognize the opportunity and the privilege you have to say something becomes more sacred... Your inner editor becomes harsher, a little more inclined to say: Are you sure you’re going to waste everyone’s time with these heady words? Or are you going to clear the way for something that means something? Because this might be the last chance to do anything with the tools you’ve been given.”
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Gimme Indie Rack Space
The record industry has been stretching the meaning of the word "independent" for several decades, so there's no need to flip your wig just because the world's biggest record company—which accounts for about a third of all music consumed globally and will go public next week at a valuation in the tens of billions of dollars—has launched what it says is a new independent label. But you might consider pausing for a moment, while you gently adjust your wig, to ask what exactly it means when a major label gets into indie label cosplay.
IMPERIAL MUSIC—the name literally means part of an empire—is designed as a home for emerging artists who'll have a chance to graduate to UMG's flagship pop label, REPUBLIC, if they do well. It's run by a seasoned industry veteran, GLENN MENDLINGER, who reports to Republic executives. Its records, two of which (by TOMORROW X TOGETHER and G HERBO) have already reached the top five of the BILLBOARD 200, are distributed not by UMG's main distribution arm but by INGROOVES, a smaller label-services company that UMG owns. (Imperial managed to score those top five chart placements because it's been in business for a year even though its launch was just formally announced. Words don't mean what they used to.) Imperial says it offers flexibility, nimbleness and "speed to market and services that scale with [individual artists'] needs," which are all good things that major labels should be offering for all their artists, not just the up-and-coming ones. Imperial also offers direct lines at every step of the way to the major label C-suite, which is, by definition, a thing indie labels don't do. Real nimbleness means not having to call into corporate headquarters every Wednesday afternoon.
The traditional music biz definition of "indie" was any artist or label not distributed by one of the three (it used to be six, then five, then four, now three) multinational conglomerates that dominate the business. That distinction has become cloudier and cloudier of the years, as major labels bought or started "indie" distribution companies of their own and, later, as the very nature of distribution changed from shipping hard product to uploading ones and zeros. (And, to be fair, as marketers, publicists, writers and bands themselves started using indie not as a business term but as a genre tag. Many sides are to blame here.) Nowadays indie seems to mean any company that wants to call itself indie, perhaps in search of a marketing edge, or to give up-and-coming artists plausible deniability, or to clear their books of underperforming acts so as not to dilute their multiplatinum brand. Or maybe, in cases like Imperial/UMG, it's simply a nicer term for farm team. Or unpaid internship.
You're under no obligation to play along.
Friends in Low Places
It's been quite some time since SUB POP could call itself a proper indie label—it's half owned by WARNER—but it's never pretended to be what it isn't and nor has the band LOW, which has been at it for 30 years, the last 20 or so in partnership with Sub Pop. HEY WHAT, Low's 13th album, came out Friday and it's one of the most astonishing rock albums I've heard in a long time. Low and producer BJ BURTON, working together for a third straight album, are making what you might call minimalist but loud electronic folk-pop, with spare tracks constructed from distorted and distressed electronics, which ALAN SPARHAWK and MIMI PARKER sing through in close harmonies that seem to be raging, often quite prettily, against their own machine. The style, writes Pitchfork's ANDY CUSH, is "conversant with the vanguards of electronic, pop, and hip-hop production" (cc: Imperial, Republic and UMG). The songs are conversant with the current sociopolitical moment without explicitly saying so, and those voices are trying to tell us something. "It's not hope," Sparhawk told Stereogum. "It’s something kind of beyond that. To me, it’s absurdity in the face of chaos. It’s an explosion going off and you look around and go, 'Oh, we’re still alive, now what'... There must be some force moving us forward. It doesn’t feel like hope, but let’s hang on to that, whatever that is."
Programming Note
There will be no MusicREDEF on Thursday because of Yom Kippur. We'll be back in your inbox Friday morning.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| things we lost in the fire |
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5 Magazine |
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| Downsampled: How the frenzied sale of music publishing will change sample culture |
| by Terry Matthew |
| The power and dominance of the new song management companies buying up artists' publishing will have serious effects on sample culture. Undoubtedly, they'll be for the worst. |
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Water & Music |
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| The à-la-carte artist: How Drake uses variability to provide each fan with a unique experience |
| by Denisha Kuhlor |
| Drake has mastered the art of interchanging between the micro and macro to provide a diverse palette of content to ensure that each fan consumes and experiences him differently. |
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Pitchfork |
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| Best New Music: Low's 'Hey What' |
| by Andy Cush |
| On the follow-up to 2018’s astonishing "Double Negative," Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk push deeper into abstraction, finding fresh angles on the themes that have animated them since the beginning. |
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Music Business Worldwide |
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| Vincent Bolloré is about to own $7bn-plus of Universal shares… and other things we learned from UMG’s new prospectus |
| by Murray Stassen |
| Prospectus published ahead of UMG's listing on the Amsterdam stock exchange on September 21. |
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Music Business Worldwide |
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| Meet Universal Music Group’s new board |
| by Murray Stassen |
| UMG has published the names of the new 10-person board, as of September 20. |
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Billboard |
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| Drake’s ‘Certified Lover Boy’ Credits R. Kelly, *NSYNC & The Beatles -- But Who Gets What? |
| by Kristin Robinson |
| Even after Drake's album was released, a source told Billboard, the writing credit splits -- meaning which collaborators get what share of a song -- were not yet finalized. |
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DJ TechTools |
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| DJ gear: prices going up, supply low -- here's why + what every DJ should do right now |
| by Dan White |
| If you're in the market for DJ or production gear, you might have noticed two big trends right now in 2021. It's really hard to get gear right now (many, many products are out of stock) and prices seem to be increasing. |
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Trapital |
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| Why Motown Records Inked Joint Venture with NBA YoungBoy’s Never Broke Again Record Label |
| by Dan Runcie |
| Last week, Motown entered into a global joint venture with the Louisiana rapper's record label, Never Broke Again records. Big move for Motown. Motown doesn't make moves like this often. Its last joint venture was its 2015 JV with Quality Control Music, one of the most successful label partnerships of the past decade. |
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Disgraceland |
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| Fleetwood Mac Pt. 1; Guns, God, Cocaine and Rumours |
| by Jake Brennan |
| From their earliest days as an English blues band to the pop superstars they would become in the mid to late ’70s, one thing about Fleetwood Mac never faltered: They always had talent — and drama — to spare. |
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Variety |
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| ‘Listening to Kenny G’ Review: You’ll Never Think About the Pop Sax Artist the Same Way Again |
| by Peter Debruge |
| Director Penny Lane examines how popular success has made the top-selling instrumentalist one of the most reviled figures in commercial music, a field known for co-opting the counterculture. |
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VICE |
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| Musicians Have a Love-Hate Relationship With Festivals, Too |
| by Kristin Corry |
| Festival-seasoned artists Jack Harlow, Duckwrth, and Sam Hunt share their best and worst times as attendees, and as performers. |
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Billboard |
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| Brands Bank on Live Music’s Return: ‘They’re Sick of Being on the Sidelines’ |
| by Steve Knopper |
| After a year and a half of pulling hundreds of millions of dollars out of planned live-event sponsorships during the pandemic, brands like Budweiser, Bacardi, T-Mobile and Toyota have spent much of 2021 rushing back. But as the Delta variant has led to evolving health rules and canceled shows, corporations have had to be flexible and adapt. |
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Stereogum |
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| Low On Alice Coltrane, Harsh Winters, And Other Inspirations For Their Haunting New Album |
| by Ryan Leas |
| In the almost 30 years they’ve been releasing music, there have been many iterations of Low. Always with Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker at the project’s core, the band has mutated and grown over and over again. Still, nobody could’ve quite predicted the radical transformation the duo has undertaken in recent years. |
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DJ Mag |
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| UNIIQU3: Jersey club's singular sensation |
| by Bruce Tantum |
| The raucous rhythms of Jersey club have been everywhere lately, and UNIIQU3, aka the Jersey Club Queen, is one of the main reasons why. |
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The Guardian |
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| 'Look Away' review -- horrifying stories of abuse at the hands of male rock stars |
| by Lucy Mangan |
| These interviews with the so-called ‘baby groupies’ of the 70s and 80s reveal why the music industry desperately needs its own #MeToo moment. |
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The New York Times |
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| Is Drake Tired of Drake? |
| by Jon Caramanica, Charles Holmes and Jeff Ihaza |
| “Certified Lover Boy” dominated the charts, but something seems to have shifted in the most influential pop star of the past decade. |
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WeTransfer |
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| Ostinato Records: What the Truth Sounds Like |
| by Sajae Elder |
| The New York label is on a mission to recover the artistic legacies of countries and societies that have suffered everything from political unrest to natural disasters. Since he founded the label in 2016, Vik Sohonie has released long-forgotten music from Senegal, Haiti, Cape Verde, Somalia, and Sudan. |
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The Guardian |
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| Michael Chapman was the deepest, most joyful musical lifer I’ve ever met |
| by MC Taylor |
| From shaping English folk and Bowie’s Spiders from Mars to playing at King Curtis’s funeral, he inspired me and so many others with his joy and soul. |
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| Music of the day |
| "White Horses" |
| Low |
| From "Hey What," out now on Sub Pop. |
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YouTube |
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From "Hey What," out now on Sub Pop.
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| Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech |
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“REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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| Jason Hirschhorn |
| CEO & Chief Curator |
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